John Donne
Rev. John Donne (1572 - 31 March 1631) was a leading English poet of the metaphysical school. The Encyclopædia Britannica says that Donne "is often considered the greatest love poet in the English language. He is also noted for his religious verse and treatises and for his sermons, which rank among the best of the 17th century."Patricia Garland Pinka, "John Donne," Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., Web, Sep. 3, 2012. Life Overview Donne, was born in London, son of a wealthy ironmonger. Brought up as a Roman Catholic, he was sent to Oxford and Cambridge, and afterwards entered Lincoln's Inn with a view to the law. Here he studied the points of controversy between Romanists and Protestants, with the result that he joined the Church of England. The next 2 years were somewhat changeful, including travels on the Continent, service as a private sec., and a clandestine marriage with the niece of his patron, which led to dismissal and imprisonment, followed by reconciliation. On the suggestion of James I, who approved of Pseudo-Martyr (1610), a book against Rome which he had written, he took orders, and after executing a mission to Bohemia, he was, in 1621, made Dean of St. Paul's. Donne had great popularity as a preacher. His works consist of elegies, satires, epigrams, and religious pieces, in which, amid many conceits and much that is artificial, frigid, and worse, there is likewise much poetry and imagination of a high order. Perhaps the best of his works is "An Anatomy of the World" (1611), an elegy. Others are "Epithalamium" (1613), "Progress of the Soul" (1601), and "Divine Poems." Collections of his poems appeared in 1633 and 1649. He exercised a strong influence on literature for over half a century after his death; to him we owe the unnatural style of conceits and overstrained efforts after originality of the succeeding age.John William Cousin, "Donne, John," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910, 119. Web, Jan. 5, 2018. Youth and education Donnew was born in the parish of St Nicholas Olave, London. His father was a wealthy merchant, who next year became warden of the Company of Ironmongers, but died early in 1576. Donne’s parents were Catholics, and his mother, Elizabeth (Heywood), was directly descended from the sister of the great Sir Thomas More; she was the daughter of John Heywood the epigrammatist. As a child, Donne’s precocity was such that it was said of him that “this age hath brought forth another Pico della Mirandola.” He entered Hart Hall, Oxford, in October 1584, and left it in 1587, proceeding for a time to Cambridge, where he took his degree. At Oxford he began his friendship with Henry Wotton, and at Cambridge, probably, with Christopher Brooke. 1590-1600 Donne moved to London about 1590, and in 1592 he entered Lincoln’s Inn with the intention of studying law. When he came of age, he found himself in possession of a considerable fortune, and about the same time rejected Catholic doctrine in favor of the Anglican communion. He began to produce satires, which were not printed, but eagerly passed from hand to hand; the earliest 3 are known to belong to 1593, the 4th to 1594, while the other 3 are probably some years later. In 1596 Donne engaged himself for foreign service under the earl of Essex, and “waited upon his lordship” on board the Repulse” in the victory of 11 June. We possess several poems written by Donne during this expedition, and during the Islands Voyage of 1597, in which he accompanied Essex to the Azores. According to Izaak Walton, Donne spent some time in Italy and Spain, and intended to proceed to Palestine, “but at his being in the farthest parts of Italy, the disappointment of company, or of a safe convoy, or the uncertainty of returns of money into those remote parts, denied him that happiness.” There is some reason to suppose that he was on the continent at intervals between 1595 and the winter of 1597. His lyrical poetry was mainly the product of his exile, if we are to believe Ben Jonson, who told William Drummond of Hawthornden that Donne “wrote all his best pieces ere he was 25 years old.” At his return to England he became private secretary in London to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord keeper (afterwards Lord Brackley), in whose family he remained 4 years. During the latter part of his residence in Sir Thomas Egerton’s house, Donne had composed the longest of his existing poems, "The Progress of the Soul" (not published until 1633). 1600-1610 In 1600 Donne found himself in love with Egerton’s niece, Anne More, whom he married secretly in December 1601. As soon as this act was discovered, Donne was dismissed, and then thrown into the Fleet prison (February 1602), from which he was soon released. His circumstances, however, were now very much straitened. His own fortune had all been spent and “troubles did still multiply upon him.” Mrs. Donne’s cousin, Sir Francis Wooley, offered the young couple an asylum at his country house of Pyrford, where they lived until the end of 1604. In the spring of 1605 we find the Donnes living at Camberwell, and a little later in a small house at Mitcham. Donne had by this time “acquired such a perfection” in civil and common law that he was able to take up professional work, and he now acted as a helper to Thomas Morton in his controversies with the Catholics. Donne is believed to have had a considerable share in writing the pamphlets against the papists which Morton issued between 1604 and 1607. In the latter year, Morton offered the poet certain preferment in the Church, if he would only consent to take holy orders. Donne, however, although he was by this time deeply serious on religious matters, did not think himself fitted for the clerical life. In 1607 Donne started a correspondence with Magdalen Herbert of Montgomery Castle, the mother of Edward and George Herbert. Some of these pious epistles were printed by Izaak Walton. These exercises were not of a nature to add to his income, which was extremely small. His uncomfortable little house he speaks of as his “hospital” and his “prison;” his wife’s health was broken and he was bowed down by the number of his children, who often lacked even clothes and food. In the autumn of 1608, however, his father-in-law, Sir George More, became reconciled with them, and agreed to make them a generous allowance. Donne soon after formed part of the brilliant assemblage which Lucy, countess of Bradford, gathered around her at Twickenham; we possess several of the verse epistles he addressed to this lady. In 1609 Donne was engaged in composing his great controversial prose treatise, the Pseudo-Martyr, printed in 1610; this was an attempt to convince Roman Catholics in England that they might, without any inconsistency, take the oath of allegiance to James I. In 1611 Donne wrote a curious and bitter prose squib against the Jesuits, entitled Ignatius his Conclave. To the same period, but possibly somewhat earlier, belongs the apology for the principle of suicide, which was not published until 1644, long after Donne’s death. This work, the Biathanatos, is an attempt to show that “the scandalous disease of headlong dying,” to which Donne himself in his unhappy moods had “often such a sickly inclination,” was not necessarily and essentially sinful. 1610- In 1610 Donne formed the acquaintance of a wealthy gentleman, Sir Robert Drury of Hawsted, who offered him and his wife an apartment in his large house in Drury Lane. Drury lost his only daughter, and in 1611 Donne published an extravagant elegy on her, entitled "An Anatomy of the World," to which he added in 1612 a "Progress of the Soul" on the same subject; he threatened to celebrate the “blessèd Maid,” Elizabeth Drury, in a fresh elegy on each anniversary of her death, but he happily refrained from the 3rd occasion onwards. At the close of 1611 Sir Robert Drury determined to visit Paris (but not, as Walton supposed, on an embassy of any kind), and he took Donne with him. When Donne left London, his wife was expecting an eighth child. It seems almost certain that her fear to have him absent led him to compose one of his loveliest poems: :Sweetest Love, I do not go ⁠:For weariness of thee. He is said while at Amiens to have had a vision of his wife, with her hair over her shoulders, bearing a dead child in her arms, on the very night that Mrs Donne, in London (or more probably in the Isle of Wight), was delivered of a still-born infant. He suffered, accordingly, a great anxiety, which was not removed until he reached Paris, where he received reassuring accounts of his wife’s health. The Drurys and Donne left Paris for Spa in May 1612, and traveled in the Low Countries and Germany until September, when they returned to London. In 1613 Donne contributed to the Lachrymae lachrymarum an obscure and frigid elegy on the death of the prince of Wales, and wrote his famous "Marriage Song for St Valentine’s Day" to celebrate the nuptials of the elector palatine with the princess Elizabeth. About this time Donne became intimate with Robert Ker, then Viscount Rochester and afterwards the infamous earl of Somerset, from whom he had hopes of preferment at court. Donne was now in weak health, and in a highly neurotic condition. He suggested to Rochester that if he should enter the church, a place there might be found for him. But he was more useful to the courtier in his legal capacity, and Rochester dissuaded him from the ministry. At the close of 1614, however, the king sent for Donne to Theobald’s, and “descended to a persuasion, almost to a solicitation of him, to enter into sacred orders,” but Donne asked for a few days to consider. Finally, early in 1614, King, bishop of London, “proceeded with all convenient speed to ordain him, first deacon, then priest.” He was, perhaps, a curate first at Paddington, and presently was appointed royal chaplain. His earliest sermon before the king at Whitehall carried his audience “to heaven, in holy raptures.” In April, not without much bad grace, the university of Cambridge consented to make the new divine a D.D. In the spring of 1616, Donne was presented to the living of Keyston, in Hunts., and a little later he became rector of Sevenoaks; the latter preferment he held until his death. In October he was appointed reader in divinity to the benchers of Lincoln’s Inn. His anxieties about money now ceased, but in August 1617 his wife died, leaving seven young children in his charge. Perhaps in consequence of his bereavement, Donne seems to have passed through a spiritual crisis, which inspired him with a peculiar fervour of devotion. In 1618 he wrote two cycles of religious sonnets, La Corona and the Holy Sonnets, the latter not printed in complete form until by Mr Gosse in 1899. Of the very numerous sermons preached by Donne at Lincoln’s Inn, fourteen have come down to us. His health suffered from the austerity of his life, and it was probably in connexion with this fact that he allowed himself to be persuaded in May 1619 to accompany Lord Doncaster as his chaplain on an embassy to Germany. Having visited Heidelberg, Frankfort and other German cities, the embassy returned to England at the opening of 1620. In November 1621, James I., knowing that London was “a dish” which Donne “loved well,” “carved” for him the deanery of St Paul’s. He resigned Keyston, and his preachership in Lincoln’s Inn (Feb., 1622). In October 1623 he suffered from a dangerous attack of illness, and during a long convalescence wrote his Devotions, a volume published in 1624. He was now appointed to the vicarage of St Dunstan’s in the West. In April 1625 Donne preached before the new king, Charles I., a sermon which was immediately printed, and he now published his Four Sermons upon Special Occasions, the earliest collection of his discourses. When the plague broke out he retired with his children to the house of Sir John Danvers in Chiswick, and for a time he disappeared so completely that a rumour arose that he was dead. Sir John had married Donne’s old friend, Mrs Magdalen Herbert, for whom Donne wrote two of the most ingenious of his lyrics, “The Primrose” and “The Autumnal.” The popularity of Donne as a preacher rose to its zenith when he returned to his pulpit, and it continued there until his death. Walton, who seems to have known him first in 1624, now became an intimate and adoring friend. In 1630 Donne’s health, always feeble, broke down completely, so that, although in August of that year he was to have been made a bishop, the entire breakdown of his health made it worse than useless to promote him. The greater part of that winter he spent at Abury Hatch, in Epping Forest, with his widowed daughter, Constance Alleyn, and was too ill to preach before the king at Christmas. It is believed that his disease was a malarial form of recurrent quinsy acting upon an extremely neurotic system. He came back to London, and was able to preach at Whitehall on the 12th of February 1631. This, his latest sermon, was published, soon after his demise, as Death’s Duel. He now stood for his statue to the sculptor, Nicholas Stone, standing before a fire in his study at the Deanery, with his winding-sheet wrapped and tied round him, his eyes shut, and his feet resting on a funeral urn. This lugubrious work of art was set up in white marble after his death in St Paul’s cathedral, where it may still be seen. Donne died on the 31st of March 1631, after he had lain “fifteen days earnestly expecting his hourly change.” His aged mother, who had lived in the Deanery, survived him, dying in 1632. Donne’s poems were first collected in 1633, and afterwards in 1635, 1639, 1649, 1650, 1654 and 1669. Of his prose works, the Juvenilia appeared in 1633; the LXXX Sermons in 1640; Biathanatos in 1644; Fifty Sermons in 1649; Essays in Divinity, 1651; his Letters to Several Persons of Honour, 1651; Paradoxes, Problems and Essays, 1652; and Six and Twenty Sermons, 1661. Izaak Walton’s Life of Donne, an admirably written but not entirely correct biography, preceded the Sermons of 1640. The principal editor of his posthumous writings was his son, John Donne the younger (1604-1662), a man of eccentric and scandalous character, but of considerable talent. The influence of Donne upon the literature of England was singularly wide and deep, although almost wholly malign. His originality and the fervour of his imaginative passion made him extremely attractive to the younger generation of poets, who saw that he had broken through the old tradition, and were ready to follow him implicitly into new fields. In the 18th century his reputation almost disappeared, to return, with many vicissitudes in the course of the 19th. It is, indeed, singularly difficult to pronounce a judicious opinion on the writings of Donne. They were excessively admired by his own and the next generation, praised by Dryden, paraphrased by Pope, and then entirely neglected for a whole century. The first impression of an unbiassed reader who dips into the poems of Donne is unfavourable. He is repulsed by the intolerably harsh and crabbed versification, by the recondite choice of theme and expression, and by the oddity of the thought. In time, however, he perceives that behind the fantastic garb of language there is an earnest and vigorous mind, an imagination that harbours fire within its cloudy folds, and an insight into the mysteries of spiritual life which is often startling. Donne excels in brief flashes of wit and beauty, and in sudden daring phrases that have the full perfume of poetry in them. Some of his lyrics and one or two of his elegies excepted, the Satires are his most important contribution to literature. They are probably the earliest poems of their kind in the language, and they are full of force and picturesqueness. Their obscure and knotty language only serves to give peculiar brilliancy to the not uncommon passages of noble perspicacity. To the odd terminology of Donne’s poetic philosophy Dryden gave the name of “metaphysics,” and Johnson, borrowing the suggestion, invented the title of the “metaphysical school” to describe, not Donne only, but all the amorous and philosophical poets who succeeded him, and who employed a similarly fantastic language, and who affected odd figurative inversions. Izaak Walton’s Life, first published in 1640, and entirely recast in 1659, has been constantly reprinted. The best edition of Donne’s Poems was edited by E. K. Chambers in 1896. His prose works have not been collected. In 1899 Edmund Gosse published in two volumes The Life and Letters of John Donne, for the first time revised and collected. (E. G.)  417418 Donne was born in London between January 24 and June 19, 1572,John Donne, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. Web, June 5, 2016. into a Roman Catholic family, at a time when open practice of that religion was illegal in England. He was the third of 6 children. His father, also named John Donne, was of Welsh descent, and a warden of the Ironmongers Company in the City of London. Donne's father was a respected Catholic who avoided unwelcome government attention out of fear of being persecuted for his religious faith."Donne, John" by Richard W. Langstaff. Article from Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 8. Bernard Johnston, general editor. P.F. Colliers Inc., New York: 1988. pp. 346-349."Donne, John." Article in British Authors Before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Stanley Kunitz and Howard Haycraft. The H.W. Wilson Company, New York: 1952. pp. 156-158 Donne's father died in 1576, leaving his wife, Elizabeth Heywood, the responsibility of raising their children. Elizabeth Heywood was also from a recusant Catholic family, the daughter of John Heywood, the playwright, and sister of Rev. Jasper Heywood, a Jesuit priest and translator. She was a great-niece of the Catholic martyr Thomas More.Jokinen, Anniina. "The Life of John Donne." Luminarium, 22 June 2006. Accessed 22 January 2007. This tradition of martyrdom would continue among Donne's closer relatives, many of whom were executed or exiled for religious reasons.Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton anthology of English literature, Eighth edition. W.W. Norton and Company, 2006. ISBN 0-393-92828-4; pp. 600-602 Donne was educated privately; however there is no evidence to support the popular claim that he was taught by Jesuits.* Colclough, "Donne, John (1572-1631)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, October 2007 oxforddnb.com, accessed 18 May 2010 Donne's mother married Dr. John Syminges, a wealthy widower with three children, a few months after Donne's father died. In 1577, his mother died, followed by two more of his sisters, Mary and Katherine, in 1581. .]] Donne was a student at Hart Hall, now Hertford College, Oxford, from the age of 11. After three years at Oxford he was admitted to the University of Cambridge, where he studied for another three years. He was unable to obtain a degree from either institution because of his Catholicism, since he could not take the Oath of Supremacy required of graduates. In 1591 he was accepted as a student at the Thavies Inn legal school, one of the Inns of Chancery in London. In 1592 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, one of the Inns of Court. His brother Henry was also a university student prior to his arrest in 1593 for harbouring a Catholic priest, William Harrington, whom Henry betrayed under torture. Harrington was tortured on the rack, hanged until not quite dead, then was subjected to disembowelment. Henry Donne died in Newgate prison of bubonic plague, leading John Donne to begin questioning his Catholic faith. During and after his education, Donne spent much of his considerable inheritance on women, literature, pastimes and travel. Although there is no record detailing precisely where he traveled, it is known that he traveled across Europe and later fought with the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh against the Spanish at Cadiz (1596) and the Azores (1597) and witnessed the loss of the Spanish flagship, the San Felipe.Donne, John. The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Accessed 19 February 2007.Will and Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part VII: The Age of Reason Begins. Simon and Schuster: New York, 1961. pp. 154-156 According to Izaak Walton, who wrote a biography of Donne in 1640: By the age of 25 he was well prepared for the diplomatic career he appeared to be seeking.Will and Ariel Durant. The Story of Civilization: Part VII: The Age of Reason Begins. Simon and Schuster: New York, 1961. pp. 154-156 He was appointed chief secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Thomas Egerton, and was established at Egerton's London home, York House, Strand close to the Palace of Whitehall, then the most influential social centre in England. Marriage to Anne More During the next four years he fell in love with Egerton's niece Anne More, and they were married just before Christmas in 1601 against the wishes of both Egerton and George More, Lieutenant of the Tower and Anne's father. This ruined Donne's career and earned him a short stay in Fleet Prison, along with the priest who married them and the man who acted as a witness to the wedding. Donne was released when the marriage was proven valid, and soon secured the release of the other two. Walton tells us that when he wrote to his wife to tell her about losing his post, he wrote after his name: John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done. It was not until 1609 that Donne was reconciled with his father-in-law and received his wife's dowry. Following his release, Donne had to accept a retired country life in Pyrford, Surrey. Over the next few years he scraped a meagre living as a lawyer, depending on his wife's cousin Sir Francis Wolly to house him, his wife, and their children. Since Anne Donne had a baby almost every year, this was a very generous gesture. Though he practised law and worked as an assistant pamphleteer to Thomas Morton, Donne was in a constant state of financial insecurity, with a growing family to provide for. Anne bore him 12 children in 16 years of marriage (including two stillbirths - their eighth and then in 1617 their last child); indeed, she spent most of her married life either pregnant or nursing. The 10 surviving children were named Constance, John, George, Francis, Lucy (after Donne's patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford, her godmother), Bridget, Mary, Nicholas, Margaret and Elizabeth. Francis, Nicholas and Mary died before they were ten. In a state of despair, Donne noted that the death of a child would mean one fewer mouth to feed, but he could not afford the burial expenses. During this time Donne wrote, but did not publish, Biathanatos, his defence of suicide.Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton anthology of English literature Eighth edition. W. W. Norton and Company, 2006. ISBN 0-393-92828-4. p. 601 His wife died on 15 August 1617, five days after giving birth to their twelfth child, a still-born baby. Donne mourned her deeply, including writing the 17th Holy Sonnet. He never remarried; this was quite unusual for the time, especially as he had a large family to bring up. Early poetry Donne's earliest poems showed a developed knowledge of English society coupled with sharp criticism of its problems. His satires dealt with common Elizabethan topics, such as corruption in the legal system, mediocre poets, and pompous courtiers. His images of sickness, vomit, manure, and plague assisted in the creation of a strongly satiric world populated by all the fools and knaves of England. His third satire, however, deals with the problem of true religion, a matter of great importance to Donne. He argued that it was better to examine carefully one's religious convictions than blindly to follow any established tradition, for none would be saved at the Final Judgment, by claiming "A Harry, or a Martin taught them this."Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton anthology of English literature Eighth edition. W. W. Norton and Company, 2006. ISBN 0-393-92828-4. p. 600. Donne's early career was also notable for his erotic poetry, especially his elegies, in which he employed unconventional metaphors, such as a flea biting two lovers being compared to sex. In Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed, he poetically undressed his mistress and compared the act of fondling to the exploration of America. In Elegy XVIII, he compared the gap between his lover's breasts to the Hellespont.Will and Ariel Durant. The Age of Reason Begins Donne did not publish these poems, although did allow them to circulate widely in manuscript form. Career Donne was elected as Member of Parliament for the constituency of Brackley in 1602, but this was not a paid position and Donne struggled to provide for his family, relying heavily upon rich friends. The fashion for coterie poetry of the period gave him a means to seek patronage and many of his poems were written for wealthy friends or patrons, especially Sir Robert Drury, who came to be Donne's chief patron in 1610. Donne wrote the two Anniversaries, An Anatomy of the World]] (1611) and Of the Progress of the Soul, (1612), for Drury. While historians are not certain as to the precise reasons for which Donne left the Catholic Church, he was certainly in communication with the King, James I of England, and in 1610 and 1611 he wrote two anti-Catholic polemics: Pseudo-Martyr and Ignatius his Conclave. Although James was pleased with Donne's work, he refused to reinstate him at court and instead urged him to take holy orders. At length, Donne acceded to the King's wishes and in 1615 was ordained into the Church of England. .Lapham, Lewis. The End of the World. Thomas Dunne Books: New York, 1997. p. 98. He hung the portrait on his wall as a reminder of the transience of life.]] Donne became a Royal Chaplain in late 1615, Reader of Divinity at Lincoln's Inn in 1616, and received a Doctor of Divinity degree from Cambridge University in 1618. Later in 1618 he became chaplain to Viscount Doncaster, who was on an embassy to the princes of Germany. Donne did not return to England until 1620. In 1621 Donne was made Dean of St Paul's, a leading (and well-paid) position in the Church of England and one he held until his death in 1631. During his period as Dean his daughter Lucy died, aged eighteen. It was in late November and early December 1623 that he suffered a nearly fatal illness, thought to be either typhus or a combination of a cold followed by the seven-day relapsing fever. During his convalescence he wrote a series of meditations and prayers on health, pain, and sickness that were published as a book in 1624 under the title of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions. One of these meditations, Meditation XVII, later became well known for its phrase "for whom the bell tolls" and the statement that "no man is an island". In 1624 he became vicar of St Dunstan-in-the-West, and 1625 a Royal Chaplain to Charles I. He earned a reputation as an eloquent preacher and 160 of his sermons have survived, including the famous Death's Duel sermon delivered at the Palace of Whitehall before King Charles I in February 1631. Later poetry Some have speculated that Donne's numerous illnesses, financial strain, and the deaths of his friends all contributed to the development of a more somber and pious tone in his later poems. The change can be clearly seen in "An Anatomy of the World]]" (1611), a poem that Donne wrote in memory of Elizabeth Drury, daughter of his patron, Sir Robert Drury of Hawstead, Suffolk. This poem treats Elizabeth's demise with extreme gloominess, using it as a symbol for the Fall of Man and the destruction of the universe. The poem "A Nocturnal upon S. Lucy's Day, Being the Shortest Day]]",, concerns the poet's despair at the death of a loved one. In it Donne expresses a feeling of utter negation and hopelessness, saying that "I am every dead thing...re-begot / Of absence, darkness, death." This famous work was probably written in 1627 when both Donne's friend Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and his daughter Lucy Donne died. Three years later, in 1630, Donne wrote his will on Saint Lucy's day, the date the poem describes as "Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight." The increasing gloominess of Donne's tone may also be observed in the religious works that he began writing during the same period. His early belief in the value of skepticism now gave way to a firm faith in the traditional teachings of the Bible. Having converted to the Anglican Church, Donne focused his literary career on religious literature. He quickly became noted for his sermons and religious poems. The lines of these sermons would come to influence future works of English literature, such as Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, which took its title from a passage in Meditation XVII of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and Thomas Merton's No Man is an Island, which took its title from the same source. Towards the end of his life Donne wrote works that challenged death, and the fear that it inspired in many men, on the grounds of his belief that those who die are sent to Heaven to live eternally. One example of this challenge is his Holy Sonnet X, from which come the famous lines "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee / Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so." Even as he lay dying during Lent in 1631, he rose from his sickbed and delivered the Death's Duel sermon, which was later described as his own funeral sermon. Death's Duel portrays life as a steady descent to suffering and death, yet sees hope in salvation and immortality through an embrace of God, Christ and the Resurrection.Fulfilling the Circle: A Study of John Donne's Thought by Terry G. Sherwood University of Toronto Press, 1984, p. 231 Death It is thought that his final illness was stomach cancer, although this has not been proven. He died on 31 March 1631 having written many poems, most only in manuscript. Donne was buried in old St Paul's Cathedral, where a memorial statue of him was erected (carved from a drawing of him in his shroud), with a Latin epigraph probably composed by himself. Donne's monument survived the 1666 fire, and is on display in the present building. Writing His work has received much criticism over the years, especially concerning his metaphysical form. His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness of metaphor, especially as compared to that of his contemporaries. John Donne's style is characterized by abrupt openings, various paradoxes, ironies, dislocations. These features in combination with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense syntax, and his tough eloquence were both a reaction against the smoothness of conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that bore immense knowledge of British society and he met that knowledge with sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry was the idea of true religion, which was something that he spent a lot of time considering and theorizing about. Donne is particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysical conceits.Bookrags.com Donne is generally considered the most prominent member of the Metaphysical poets, a phrase coined in 1781 by the critic Dr Johnson, following a comment on Donne by the poet John Dryden. Dryden had written of Donne in 1693: "He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love."''Dryden, John, A Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire (London, 1693) In ''Life of Cowley (from Samuel Johnson's 1781 work of biography and criticism Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets), Johnson refers to the beginning of the seventeenth century in which there "appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets". Donne's immediate successors in poetry therefore tended to regard his works with ambivalence, with the Neoclassical poets regarding his conceits as abuse of the metaphor. However he was revived by Romantic poets such as Coleridge and Browning, though his more recent revival in the early twentieth century by poets such as T.S. Eliot and critics like F R Leavis tended to portray him, with approval, as an anti-Romantic.The Best Poems of the English Language. Harold Bloom. HarperCollins Publishers, New York: 2004. pp. 138-139. Donne's work suggests a healthy appetite for life and its pleasures, while also expressing deep emotion. He did this through the use of conceits, wit and intellect - as seen in the poems "The Sun Rising" and "Batter My Heart". Donne is considered a master of the metaphysical conceit, an extended metaphor that combines two vastly different ideas into a single idea, often using imagery.Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton anthology of English literature Eighth edition. W. W. Norton and Company, 2006. ISBN 0-393-92828-4. pp. 600-602 An example of this is his equation of lovers with saints in "The Canonization". Unlike the conceits found in other Elizabethan poetry, most notably Petrarchan conceits, which formed clichÃ©d comparisons between more closely related objects (such as a rose and love), metaphysical conceits go to a greater depth in comparing two completely unlike objects. One of the most famous of Donne's conceits is found in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" where he compares two lovers who are separated to the two legs of a compass. Donne's works are also witty, employing paradoxes, puns, and subtle yet remarkable analogies. His pieces are often ironic and cynical, especially regarding love and human motives. Common subjects of Donne's poems are love (especially in his early life), death (especially after his wife's death), and religion. Donne's poetry represented a shift from classical forms to more personal poetry.John Donne. Island of Freedom. Accessed 19 February 2007. Donne is noted for his poetic metre, which was structured with changing and jagged rhythms that closely resemble casual speech (it was for this that the more classical-minded Ben Jonson commented that "Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging"). Some scholars believe that Donne's literary works reflect the changing trends of his life, with love poetry and satires from his youth and religious sermons during his later years. Other scholars, such as Helen Gardner, question the validity of this dating - most of his poems were published posthumously (1633). (The exceptions are his Anniversaries which were published in 1612 and Devotions upon Emergent Occasions published in 1624. His sermons are also dated, sometimes specifically by date and year. Critical introduction by John W. Hales Donne's contemporary reputation as a poet, and still more as a preacher, was immense; and a glance at his works would suffice to show that he did not deserve the contempt with which he was subsequently treated. But yet his chief interest is that he was the principal founder of a school which especially expressed and represented a certain bad taste of his day. Of his genius there can be no question; but it was perversely directed. One may almost invert Jonson’s famous panegyric on Shakespeare, and say that Donne was not for all time but for an age. To this school Dr. Johnson has given the title of the Metaphysical; and for this title there is something to be said. "Donne," says Dryden, "affects the metaphysics not only in his Satires, but in his amorous verses where Nature only should reign, and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses of love." Thus he often ponders over the mystery of love, and is exercised by subtle questions as to its nature, origin, endurance. But a yet more notable distinction of this school than its philosophising, shallow or deep, is what may be called its fantasticality, its quaint wit, elaborate ingenuity, far-fetched allusiveness; and it might better be called the Ingenious, or Fantastic School. Various and out-of-the-way information and learning is a necessary qualification for membership. Donne in one of his letters speaks of his "embracing the worst voluptuousness, an hydroptic immoderate desire of human learning and languages." Eminence is attained by using such stores in the way to be least expected. The thing to be illustrated becomes of secondary importance by the side of the illustration. The more unlikely and surprising and preposterous this is, the greater the success. This is wit of a kind. From one point of view, wit, as Dr. Johnson says, "may be considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit thus defined they and his followers have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtility surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though he sometimes admires is seldom pleased." And so in the following curious passage from Donne’s Dedication of certain poems to Lord Craven it should be observed how "wit" and "poetry" are made to correspond: "Amongst all the monsters this unlucky age has teemed with, I find none so prodigious as the poets of these late times is very much what Donne’s own critics must say, wherein men, as if they would level undertakings too as well as estates, acknowledging no inequality of parts and judgments, pretend as indifferently to the chair of wit as to the pulpit, and conceive themselves no less inspired with the spirit of poetry than with that of religion." Dryden styles Donne "the greatest wit though not the best poet of our nation." The taste which this school represents marks other literatures besides our own at this time. It was "in the air" of that age; and so was not originated by Donne. But it was he who in England first gave it full expression — who was its first vigorous and effective and devoted spokesman. And this secures him a conspicuous position in the history of our literature when we remember how prevalent was the fashion of conceits’ during the first half of the seventeenth century, and that amongst those who followed it more or less are to be mentioned, to say nothing of the earlier poems of Milton and Waller and Dryden, Suckling, Denham, Herbert, Crashaw, Cleveland, Cowley. This misspent learning, this excessive ingenuity, this laborious wit seriously mars almost the whole of Donne’s work. For the most part we look on it with amazement rather than with pleasure. It reminds us rather of a "pyrotechnic display," with its unexpected flashes and explosions, than of a sure and constant light.... We weary of such unmitigated cleverness — such ceaseless straining after novelty and surprise. We long for something simply thought, and simply said. His natural gifts were certainly great. He possesses a real energy and fervour. He loved, and he suffered much, and he writes with a passion which is perceptible through all his artificialities. Such a poem as The Will is evidence of the astonishing rapidity and brightness of his fancy. He also claims notice as one of our earliest formal satirists. Though not published till much later, there is proof that some at least of his satires were written three or four years before those of Hall. Two of them (ii. and iv.) were reproduced — "versified" — in the last century by Pope, acting on a suggestion by Dryden: No. iii. was similarly treated by Parnell. In these versions, along with the roughness of the metre, disappears much of the general vigour; and it should be remembered that the metrical roughness was no result of incapacity, but was designed. Thus the charge of metrical uncouthness so often brought against Donne on the ground of his satires is altogether mistaken. How fluently and smoothly he could write if he pleased, is attested over and over again by his lyrical pieces.from John W. Hales, "Critical Introduction: John Donne (1572–1631)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Apr. 8, 2016. Recognition Donne is commemorated as a priest in the calendars of saints of the Church of England and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on 31 March. Sylvia Plath, interviewed on BBC Radio in late 1962, said the following about a book review of her collection of poems titled The Colossus that had been published in the United Kingdom two years earlier: "I remember being appalled when someone criticized me for beginning just like John Donne but not quite managing to finish like John Donne, and I felt the weight of English literature on me at that point."[http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/Plath.html Voices and Visions television documentary] episode about Sylvia Plath telecast on PBS for the first time on 14 August 1988. Her recollection of the book revewier comparing her to John Donne is from an audio clip of one of her BBC radio appearances that she made in late 1962 after separating from her husband, poet Ted Hughes. The memorial to John Donne, modelled after the engraving pictured above, was one of the few such memorials to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666 and now appears in St Paul's Cathedral, where Donne is buried. Eight of his poems ("Daybreak," "Song," "That Time and Absence proves," "The Ecstasy," "The Dream," "The Funeral," "A Hymn to God the Father," and "Death") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.Alphabetical list of authors: Daniel, Samuel to Hyde, Douglas. Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor, Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900 (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 16, 2012. In literature Donne has appeared in several works of literature: * A dying John Donne scholar is the main character of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer prize-winning play ''Wit'' (1999), which was made into the film ''Wit'' starring Emma Thompson. * Donne's Songs and Sonnets feature in The Calligrapher (2003), a novel by Edward Docx. * In the 2006 novel The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox, Donne's works are frequently quoted. * John Donne appears, along with his wife Anne and daughter Pegge, in the award-winning novel Conceit (2007) by Mary Novik. * Joseph Brodsky has a poem called "Elegy for John Donne". * The love story of John Donne and Anne More is the subject of Maeve Haran's 2010 historical novel The Lady and the Poet. * An excerpt from "Meditation 17 Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions" serves as the opening for Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls". * Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer prize-winning novel Gilead makes several references to Donne's work. * To Your Scattered Bodies Go, the title of Philip Jose Farmer's first "Riverworld" science-fiction novel, is a phrase from Donne's "Holy Sonnet 7". In popular culture * Tarwater, in their album called Salon des Refuses, have put "The Relic" to song. * Children of Bodom, in the song "Follow the Reaper" reference John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10 * Metallica in the song "For Whom the Bell Tolls" reference Meditation 17 from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions * Titus Andronicus, in their 2008 song "Albert Camus", quote from Donne's Holy Sonnet 10 * Jethro Tull, in the song "Teacher" uses the line "No man is an Island" from Meditation 17 from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions * Van Morrison pays homage to John Donne in "Rave on John Donne," from his album "Live at the Belfast Opera House." * Lost in Austen, the British mini series based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, has Bingley refer to John Donne when he describes taking Jane to America, "John Donne, don't you know? 'License my roving hands,' and so forth." * Loudon Wainwright III, in his 1986 song Hard Day On The Planet, affirms "A man ain't an island; John Donne wasn't lying" * Indie Rock band mewithoutYou use words from A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning in their song "Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt", from their album A-B Life. * Bob Chilcott has arranged a choral piece to John Donne's "Go and Catch a Falling Star". * In the popular show Psychoville, The character David recites a John Donne poem to his dieing mother, she asks him if he had just wrote that. He replied "No, John Donne" to which she corrected, "No David, its John Did", attempting to correct his cockney. Publications Poetry *''Poems''. London: M.F. for John Marriot, 1633. *''The Poetical Works of Skelton and Donne: With a memoir of each'' (edited by Alexander Dyce). (2 volumes), Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1855.The poetical works of Skelton & Donne, Volume II (1855), Internet Archive. Web, Aug. 31, 2013. Volume II: Donne *''The Poetical Works of Dr. John Donne, with a memoir'' (edited by James Russell Lowell). Boston: Little, Brown, 1855. *''The Complete Poems'' (edited by Alexander Balloch Grosart). (2 volumes), London: Robson, 1872. Volume I, Volume II. *''The Poems'' (edited by E.K. Chambers). London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896; London: A.H. Bullen / New York: Scribner, 1901. Volume I, Volume II. *''The Love Poems'' (edited by Charles Eliot Norton). Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905. *''The Poems'' (edited by Herbert J.C. Grierson). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1912 Volume I: Text of the poems, Volume II: Introduction and commentary *''The Poems'' (edited by Hugh I'Anson Fausset). London & Toronto: Dent, 1931. *''The Complete Poems'' (edited by Roger E. Bennett). Chicago: Packard, 1942. *''The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne'' (edited by Charles M. Coffin). New York: Modern Library, 1952. *''The Anniversaries'' (edited by F. Manley). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963. *''The Complete Poetry'' (edited by John T. Shawcross). Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967. *''The Complete English Poems'' (edited by A.J. Smith). Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1971. Non-fiction *''Pseudo-Martyr. London: W. Stansby, for Walter Burre, 1610. *Conclaue Ignati (in Latin). London, 1611 ** translated as ''Ignatius His Conclaue. London: N.O. for Richard More, 1611. *''An Anatomy of the World''. London: Samuel Macham, 1611. *''The Second Anniuersarie: Of The Progres of the Soule'' (published with The First Anniuersarie: An Anatomie of the World. London: M. Bradwood for Samuel Macham, 1612. *''A Sermon Vpon The XV Verse Of The XX Chapter Of The Booke Of Ivdges''. London: William Stansby for Thomas Jones, 1622. *''A Sermon Vpon The VIII Verse Of The I Chapter of The Acts Of The Apostles''. London: Aug. Mat for Thomas Jones, 1622. *''Encænia: The feast of dedication, celebrated At Lincolnes Inne, in a sermon there upon Ascension day, 1623''. London: Aug. Mat. for Thomas Jones, 1623. *''Three Sermons Vpon Speciall Occasions''. London: for Thomas Jones, 1623. *''Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. London: A. Mat for Thomas Jones, 1624. *''The First Sermon Preached To King Charles. London: A. Mat for Thomas Jones, 1625. *''Fovre Sermons Vpon Speciall Occasions''. London: Thomas Jones, 1625. *''A Sermon, Preached To The Kings Mtie. At Whitehall, 24. Febr. 1625''. London: Thomas Jones, 1626. *''Five Sermons Vpon Speciall Occasions''. London: for Thomas Jones, 1626. *''A Sermon Of Commemoration Of The Lady Dãuers''. London: I.H. for Philemon Stephens & Christopher Meredith, 1627. *''Deaths Dvell''. London: Thomas Harper for Richard Redmer & Benjamin Fisher, 1632. *''Juvenilia''. London: E.P. for Henry Seyle, 1633. *''Six Sermons Vpon Severall Occasions''. London: Printers to the Universitie of Cambridge, sold by Nicholas Fussell & Humphrey Mosley, 1634. *''Sapientia Clamitans''. London: I. Haviland for R. Milbourne, 1638. *''Wisdome crying out to Sinners''. London: M.P. for John Stafford, 1639. *''LXXX Sermons''. London: Richard Royston & Richard Marriot, 1640. *''BIATHANATO A Declaration of that paradoxe, or thesis that selfe-homicide is not so naturally sinne, that it may never be otherwise''. London: John Dawson, 1647. *''Essays in Divinity''. London: T.M. for Richard Marriot, 1651 **(edited by Augustus Jessopp). London: John Tupling, 1855.Essays in Divinity (1855), Internet Archive. Web, Aug. 31, 2013. **(edited by Evelyn M. Simpson). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. *''Fifty Sermons''. London: Printed by Ja. Flesher for M.F.J. Marriot & R. Royston, 1649. *''XXVI Sermons''. London: Printed by T.N. for James Magnes, 1660. *''Donne's Sermons: Selected Passages'' (edited, with an introduction, by Logan Pearsall Smith). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919. *''The Sermons of John Donne'' (10 volumes, edited by George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson). Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1953-1962. *''Sermons on the Psalms and Gospels: With a selection of prayers and meditations'' (edited by Evelyn M. Simpson). Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963. *''Donne's Prebend Sermons'' (edited by Janel M. Mueller). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. *''Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions'' (edited by Anthony Raspa). Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1975. *''Biathanatos'' (edited by Ernest W. Sullivan II). Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1984. *''John Donne'' (edited by John Carey). Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Collected editions *''The Works of John Donne, D.D., Dean of Saint Paul's 1621-1631: With a memoir of his life'' (edited by Henry Alford). (6 volumes), London: John W. Parker, 1839. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III, Volume IV, Volume V, Volume VI. Letters *''Letters to Severall Persons of Honour'' (edited by John Donne, Jr.). London: J. Flesher for Richard Marriott, 1651) ** facsimile (with introduction by M. Thomas Hester). Delmar, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1977. *''A Collection of Letters, Made by Sr Tobie Mathews, Kt.'' (edited by John Donne, Jr.) London: Henry Herringman, 1660. *''Life and Letters'' (edited by Edmund Gosse). (2 volumes), London: Heinemann, 1899. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.John Donne 1572-1631, Poetry Foundation, Web, Sep. 3, 2012. See also *Canons of Renaissance poetry *The metaphysical poets *List of British poets References *R.C. Bald, John Donne: A Life.. Oxford, UK: 1970. *Edward Le Comte, Grace to a Witty Sinner: A life of Donne. Walker, 1965. *John Stubbs, Donne: The reformed soul. Viking, 2006. ISBN 0-670-91510-6 *Kit Lim, John Donne: An Eternity of Song. Penguin, 2005. *Frank J. Warnke, John Donne. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987. Notes External links ;Poems *"The Indifferent" *"Sonnet. The Token" *John Donne 1572-1631 at the Poetry Foundation *Rev. John Donne info & 3 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830 * John Donne in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "Daybreak," "Song," "That Time and Absence proves," "The Ecstasy," "The Dream," "The Funeral," "A Hymn to God the Father," and "Death". * John Donne in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse: "Sonnet," from "The Cross", "Resurrection Imperfect," "Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward," "A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's Last Going into Germany." *Donne in The English Poets: An anthology: Song: ‘Go and catch a falling star’, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," Song: ‘Sweetest love, I do not go’, from "Verses to Sir Henry Wootton", "The Will" *John Donne profile & 18 poems at the Academy of American Poets. * Selected Poetry of John Donne (1572-1631) (118 poems) at Representative Poetry Online. * John Donne at PoemHunter (192 poems) *Selected Poems of John Donne at PoetSeers. *John Donne at Poetry Nook (301 poems) *Examples of John Donne's poetic forms * The Online Variorum ;Prose * Complete sermons of John Donne ;Books * * Works by John Donne at the Internet Archive * Digital Donne (digital images of early Donne editions and manuscripts) ;Audio / video * Selected works of Donne (audio recordings) at LibriVox. *John Donne poems at YouTube ;About * John Donne in the Encyclopædia Britannica *John Donne at Map of London, University of Victoria * John Donne at NNDB *John Donne at Biography.com * Jone Donne at The Literature Network * John Donne (1572-1631) at Luminarium * John Donne at Sparknotes * John Donne at Crossref-it.info *Donne, John in the Dictionary of National Biography * Donne undone: review of John Donne: The reformed soul by John Stubbs ;Etc. * John Donne's Monument, St Paul's Cathedral * John Donne Society Official website. 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